Before very long the dainty form of a little maiden advanced toward
him. Her name was Elisabeth, and she might have been five years old.
He himself was twice that age. Round her neck she wore a red silk
kerchief which was very becoming to her brown eyes.
"Reinhard!" she cried, "we have a holiday, a holiday! No school the
whole day and none to-morrow either!"
Reinhard was carrying his slate under his arm, but he flung it behind
the front door, and then both the children ran through the house into
the garden and through the garden gate out into the meadow. The
unexpected holiday came to them at a most happily opportune moment.
It was in the meadow that Reinhard, with Elisabeth's help, had built a
house out of sods of grass. They meant to live in it during the summer
evenings; but it still wanted a bench. He set to work at once; nails,
hammer, and the necessary boards were already to hand.
While he was thus engaged, Elisabeth went along the dyke, gathering
the ring-shaped seeds of the wild mallow in her apron, with the object
of making herself chains and necklaces out of them; so that when
Reinhard had at last finished his bench in spite of many a crookedly
hammered nail, and came out into the sunlight again, she was already
wandering far away at the other end of the meadow.
"Elisabeth!" he called, "Elisabeth!" and then she came, her hair
streaming behind her.
"Come here," he said; "our house is finished now. Why, you have got
quite hot! Come in, and let us sit on the new bench. I will tell you a
story."
So they both went in and sat down on the new bench. Elisabeth took the
little seed-rings out of her apron and strung them on long threads.
Reinhard began his tale: "There were once upon a time three
spinning-women..."[1]
[1] The beginning of one of the best known of Grimm's fairy tales.
"Oh!" said Elisabeth, "I know that off by heart; you really must not
always tell me the same story."
Accordingly Reinhard had to give up the story of the three
spinning-women and tell instead the story of the poor man who was cast
into the den of lions.
"It was now night," he said, "black night, you know, and the lions
were asleep. But every now and then they would yawn in their sleep and
shoot out their red tongues. And then the man would shudder and think
it was morning. All at once a bright light fell all about him, and
when he looked up an angel was standing before him. The angel beckoned
to him with his hand and then went straight into the rocks."
Elisabeth had been listening attentively. "An angel?" she said. "Had
he wings then?"
"It is only a story," answered Reinhard; "there are no angels, you
know."
"Oh, fie! Reinhard!" she said, staring him straight in the face.
He looked at her with a frown, and she asked him hesitatingly: "Well,
why do they always say there are? mother, and aunt, and at school as
well?"
"I don't know," he answered.
"But tell me," said Elisabeth, "are there no lions either?"
"Lions? Are there lions? In India, yes. The heathen priests harness
them to their carriages, and drive about the desert with them. When
I'm big, I mean to go out there myself. It is thousands of times more
beautiful in that country than it is here at home; there's no winter
at all there. And you must come with me. Will you?"
"Yes," said Elisabeth; "but mother must come with us, and your mother
as well."
"No," said Reinhard, "they will be too old then, and cannot come with
us."
"But I mayn't go by myself."
"Oh, but you may right enough; you will then really be my wife, and
the others will have no say in the matter."
"But mother will cry!"
"We shall come back again of course," said Reinhard impetuously. "Now
just tell me straight out, will you go with me? If not, I will go all
alone, and then I shall never come back again."
The little girl came very near to crying. "Please don't look so
angry," said she; "I will go to India with you."
Reinhard seized both her hands with frantic glee, and rushed out with
her into the meadow.
"To India, to India!" he sang, and swung her round and round, so that
her little red kerchief was whirled from off her neck. Then he
suddenly let her go and said solemnly:
"Nothing will come of it, I'm sure; you haven't the pluck."
"Elisabeth! Reinhard!" some one was now calling from the garden gate.
"Here we are!" the children answered, and raced home hand in hand.
* * * * *